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Understanding 9/11A Penny A Word (Article on pulp magazines from The American Mercury, 1936-03)
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A Pulp-Era Mystery
One of the great mysteries of the pulp era was the identity of the anonymous author of the article "A Penny A Word," a scathing indictment of the pulp magazine industry which had appeared in the March 1936 issue of The American Mercury.
The author of the article unloads on everyone: the pulp publishers, the pulp editors, the pulp authors, and even the pulp readers (whom he affectionately refers to as "morons").
At the time, some suspected H. L. Mencken himself (The American Mercury's co-founder and former editor) to have been the anonymous author.
Mencken was known to have detested the pulps, including the ones that he had founded (Black Mask, Parisienne Monthly Magazine, and Saucy Stories) - despite their having been moneymaking engines that helped support his literary magazine aspirations.
Mencken was known to have detested the pulps, including the ones that he had founded (Black Mask, Parisienne Monthly Magazine, and Saucy Stories) - despite their having been moneymaking engines that helped support his literary magazine aspirations.
In 2002, in an article on Duane Spurlock's Pulprack website, the late Peter Ruber speculated that the author of "A Penny A Word" may have been none other than pulp author and editor Anthony
M. Rud (1893-1942). He based his hypothesis on research into Rud's life
which he had done, with assistance from Richard Bleiler.
The only problem with Rud having been the author of "A Penny A Word" is
that some of the information in the 1936 article doesn't jibe with what
we now know about Rud in 2020, thanks to The FictionMags Index (an online
resource which wasn't available to Ruber and Bleiler in 2002).
The anonymous author of "A Penny A Word" states in the article that he once wrote a story for the "ill-fated" pulp Submarine Stories
and that he occasionally wrote stories for the love pulp market. Unless
he was hiding behind unknown pseudonyms, neither claim seems to have
been true for Rud.
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